


boy breaking glass

by cynassa



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 21:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14004834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa/pseuds/cynassa
Summary: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.The Jaguar lives.





	boy breaking glass

“The council has debated long and come to this agreement. Outside of Wakanda we will never seek you out nor harm you if we meet you by chance.”

Erik, N’Jadaka who was, stares at him in rage, stronger for its impotence. “I told you,” he pauses for a dragged in breath, “to let me die. You self.” He coughs harshly and then holds back by sheer force of will. “Self-righteous _bastard_.”

“You said you didn’t want to be a prisoner. You will not.” T’Challa is tired but implacable, standing across him. Dressed in a black kurta with silver working and a colourful scarf he looks every inch his royal goddamned majesty. They seem to be alone but Erik has no doubt that a sound was all it’d take before the entirety of the Dora trooped in to stab him. Properly, this time. It’s almost tempting. But dying fucking hurt.

“I have spoken with the council. The crimes against you are acknowledged to have been grave. And you have done nothing wrong according to our traditions.” There’s a slight edge that let Erik know what T’Challa thinks of that. He smiles with all his teeth out.

T’Challa declines to respond in kind. Honorable type wasn’t he? Only fought people his own size, not the weakling he had finally beat.

“You cheated.”

T’Challa twitches. But his face stayed in its calm mask.

“You fucking loser. I beat you, fair and square. I was King. The right King. And I’d do it better than you could.”

T’Challa let him finish. The mask was more brittle but it hadn’t cracked.

Erik stabs out in final desperate assault, “Daddy would be proud wouldn’t he cuz?”

T’Challa abruptly whirls around to go to the door. Erik found himself laughing again, and then breaking down into coughing. It stalls T’Challa who spoke from the door. “Wakanda hasn’t seen civil war in over a millennium. The council is worried about the… effect, of an American outsider who has already tried to destabilise our customs, when we are trying to reach out into the world. Nevertheless it is not part of our custom to keep prisoners indefinitely, and we do not believe that our rehabilitation customs would heal you.”

“So just lock out the black sheep?”

“We can offer you nothing here. We cannot even give you occupation when so many are afraid of you. Would you be content to stay here in a small part of the royal dwelling like a tame animal?” T’Challa turns around and he looks so damn earnest. “You have the freedom to do whatever you will. Go where you will, with who you will.”

“Except stay here.” Made sure by a tiny little nanodevice injected into his bloodstream, a gift from his other cousin. Guaranteed harmless except if he ever dared step within Wakanda’s borders again.

T’Challa nods, gravely, like it’s enough, like it’s not the same exile his father sent Erik to. He laughs and laughs until tears come into his eyes.

“I would rather have died.” He looks up, vision blurring but T’Challa is coming closer, trying to help him maybe, and he can see the alarm and shock on that beautiful goddamn face that had never known starvation and desperation and the clawing need to belong somewhere, anywhere. “Do you hear me, cuz, I would rather have _died_!” The scream leaves him gasping desperately for breath and the Dora are trooping in, but Erik has nothing else to say anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> title from Gwendolyn Brooks' poem of the same name
> 
> Whose broken window is a cry of art  
> (success, that winks aware  
> as elegance, as a treasonable faith)  
> is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première.  
> Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.  
> Our barbarous and metal little man.
> 
> “I shall create! If not a note, a hole.  
> If not an overture, a desecration.”


End file.
